What the Briar Remembers
fantasy◐ Mature"What bell?" Mirren demanded. The blind man pointed east with a shaking arm, toward the ruined watchtower she'd been warned never to climb. "They hung it for the last war," he said. "To call the soldiers home from death. Someone is ringing it again." She sat him against the hawthorn and started east.
The watchtower stairs were slick with the same dark sap. At the top, a girl in a soldier's coat was hauling on the bell rope, crying, ringing it over and over. "My brother's down there," she sobbed. "I'm calling him back." Each toll shook another grave loose in the forest below.
What happens next?
2 ways forwardMirren held the rope still. "Your brother won't come back as your brother," she said. "He comes back as a soldier, and soldiers obey the bell, not you." A figure was already climbing the stairs, wearing the brother's face. Mirren held up her rowan bundle. "He's not yours now — but he can still choose to lie down." The dead man looked at his sister, trembled, then turned and walked back to his grave. One by one, the others followed.